I spy with my little eye ... Bono? Blair? Gore? Murdoch? All in my backyard this weekend. They will all be staying at Spanish Bay in the corporate-town, gated-community (you can't drive through there without paying a $10) extraordinaire of Pebble Beach for an event called "Imagining the Future." I just heard about this for the first time yesterday. Sadly there will be no press coverage since press coverage of the world's most powerful press baron is barred. The L.A. Times has good coverage including a leaked draft (in pdf) of the meeting agenda. Other sources say Blair may be interviewing for a new job ...

When 250 News Corp. executives gather this weekend for a management retreat at a posh California seaside resort, they'll skip the typical team-building exercises that such confabs are known for. Why role-play when you can pick the brains of actual world leaders and rock stars?

Speakers at the Pebble Beach event will include such political powers as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former President Clinton and Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres. Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton will opine on remaking complex organizations, former Vice President Al Gore will riff on climate change, and U2's Bono will deliver a keynote address titled "The Power of One."

I'd first heard this gathering was only on Sunday, but from the leaked agenda it only starts on Sunday and runs all the way through Thursday when Bill Clinton will wrap things up with Murdoch. I wish there were press access as I'd try to get over there. Might get out my camera though and see if I can get any star sightings.

More coverage at my local paper about the hush hush surrounding the event.

"We're bringing in some of our executives from around the world to talk about the big international issues that we will all be dealing with in the coming years and decades," said News Corp. spokesman Andrew Butcher. "We'll talk about everything from geopolitics to the environment to technology. We want our executives to relax and have a great time in this beautiful area, and to go away with some fresh thoughts about the future."

By "relax," Butcher means to not be hassled by the public -- or media for that matter. Access to the event is closed to anyone without an invitation. Butcher said the conference's content won't be shared with the outside world.

Other publications following the story here, here, and here. Some blog coverage at BlairWatch. Since there will be a discussion with some MySpace users, we may as well post some criticism of Murdoch's use of MySpace at Prison Planet, though supposedly that censorship has ended.